The paper begins by acknowledging that weakened systematic precision in phenomenology has made its application in philosophy of science obscure and ineffective. The defining aspirations of early transcendental phenomenology are, however, believed to be important ones. A path is therefore explored that attempts to show how certain recent developments in the logic of self-reference fulfill in a clear and more rigorous fashion in the context of philosophy of science certain of the early hopes of phenomenologists. The resulting (...) dual approach is applied to several problems in the philosophy of science: on the one hand, to proposed rejections of scientific objectivity, to the doctrine of radical meaning variance, and to the Quine-Duhem thesis, and or. the other, to an analysis of hidden variable theory in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

This book deals with a major problem in the study of language: the problem of reference. The ease with which we refer to things in conversation is deceptive. Upon closer scrutiny, it turns out that we hardly ever tell each other explicitly what object we mean, although we expect our interlocutor to discern it. Amichai Kronfeld provides an answer to two questions associated with this: how do we successfully refer, and how can a computer be programmed to achieve this? (...) Beginning with the major theories of reference, Dr Kronfeld provides a consistent philosophical view which is a synthesis of Frege's and Russell's semantic insights with Grice's and Searle's pragmatic theories. This leads to a set of guiding principles, which are then applied to a computational model of referring. The discussion is made accessible to readers from a number of backgrounds: in particular, students and researchers in the areas of computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and the philosophy of language will want to read this book. (shrink)

Sense, Reference, and Philosophy develops the far-reaching consequences for philosophy of adopting non-Fregean intensionalism, showing that long-standing problems in the philosophy of language, and indeed other areas, that appeared intractable can now be solved. Katz proceeds to examine some of those problems in this new light, including the problem of names, natural kind terms, the Liar Paradox, the distinction between logical and extra-logical vocabulary, and the Raven paradox. In each case, a non-Fregean intentionalism provides a philosophically (...) more satisfying solution. (shrink)

A musical experience is marked by the synthesis of passion and rationality, emotion and understanding, and body and mind. Ferrara demonstrates that each method of musical analysis confines musical significance to a single level. He devises an "eclectic method" that provides bridges for musical sound, form, and reference. In response to the multiplicity of levels of musical significance Ferrara's eclectic method draws upon a wide-ranging number of conventional and nonconventional approaches to musical analysis which results in a dialectic of (...) methods. (shrink)

In this entry, the authors outline the goals of a "dynamic reference work", and explain how the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has been designed to achieve those goals.

This bibliography documents English-speaking and German-speaking books and articles concerning the subject 'reference' and some related topics that belong to the field of Analytical Philosophy. More than 2000 monographs, articles, and collections (from th.

It is argued on a variety of grounds that recent results in 'experimental philosophy of language', which appear to show that there are significant cross-cultural differences in intuitions about the reference of proper names, do not pose a threat to a more traditional mode of philosophizing about reference. Some of these same grounds justify a complaint about experimental philosophy as a whole.

Gareth Evans was arguably the finest philosopher of his generation; he died tragically young, but the work he completed has had a seismic impact on the philosophies of language and mind. In this volume an outstanding international team of contributors offer illuminating perspectives on Evans's groundbreaking work, paying tribute to his achievements and leading his ideas in new directions. Contributors Josi Luis Bermzdez, John Campbell, Quassim Cassam, E. J. Lowe, John McDowell, Christopher Peacocke, Ian Rumfitt, Ken Safir, Mark Sainsbury.

The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Frege On Sense and Reference helps the student to get to grips with Frege's thought, and introduces and assesses:the ...

Philosophers debate the death of philosophy as much as they debate the death of God. Kant claimed responsibility for both philosophy's beginning and end, while Heidegger argued it concluded with Nietzsche. In the twentieth century, figures as diverse as John Austin and Richard Rorty have proclaimed philosophy's end, with some even calling for the advent of "postphilosophy." In an effort to make sense of these conflicting positions—which often say as much about the philosopher as his subject—Isabelle Thomas-Fogiel (...) undertakes the first systematic treatment of "the end of philosophy," while also recasting the history of western thought itself. Thomas-Fogiel begins with postphilosophical claims such as scientism, which she reveals to be self-refuting, for they subsume philosophy into the branches of the natural sciences. She discovers similar issues in Rorty's skepticism and strands of continental thought. Revisiting the work of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century philosophers, when the split between analytical and continental philosophy began, Thomas-Fogiel finds both traditions followed the same path—the road of reference—which ultimately led to self-contradiction. This phenomenon, whether valorized or condemned, has been understood as the death of philosophy. Tracing this pattern from Quine to Rorty, from Heidegger to Levinas and Habermas, Thomas-Fogiel reveals the self-contradiction at the core of their claims while also carving an alternative path through self-reference. Trained under the French philosopher Bernard Bourgeois, she remakes philosophy in exciting new ways for the twenty-first century. (shrink)

The Philosophy of the Infinite, With Special Reference to the Theories of Sir William Hamilton and M. Cousin by Henry Calderwood. This book is a reproduction of the original book published in 1854 and may have some imperfections such as marks or hand-written notes.

Thought, Reference, and Experience is a collection of important new essays on topics at the intersection of philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophical logic. The starting-point for the papers is the brilliant work of the British philosopher Gareth Evans before his untimely death in 1980 at the age of 34. Evans's work on reference and singular thought transformed the Fregean approach to the philosophy of thought and language, showing how seemingly technical issues in (...) philosophical semantics are inextricably linked to fundamental questions about the structure of our thinking about ourselves and about the world. The papers, all newly written for this volume, explore different aspects of Evans's philosophical legacy, showing its importance to central areas in contemporary analytic philosophy. The volume includes a substantial introduction that introduces the principal themes in Evans's thought and places the papers in context. (shrink)

The present information explosion on the World Wide Web poses a problem for the general public and the members of an academic discipline alike, of how to find the most authoritative, comprehensive, and up-to-date information about an important topic. At the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP), we have since 1995 been developing and implementing the concept of a dynamic reference work (DRW) to provide a solution to these problems, while maintaining free access for readers. A DRW is much (...) more than a web-based encyclopedia, and its scope far exceeds that of an electronic journal or preprint exchange. In this arti cle we document the progress of the SEP toward full implementation of the DRW concept. We discuss the fiscal challenges posed by our desire to maintain free or low-cost access to the contents of the SEP, and we consider technological challenges posed by the desire to stay abreast of technological developments in docu ment markup while making it easy for authors and subject editors to write and maintain entries representing the very best scholarship. (shrink)

This article investigates the idea that meanings of proper names are their references which is popular in the philosophy of language. The aim is to show, first, that there is no satisfactory answer to the question “How references as stable relations between words and objects appear, due to accomplishment of what conditions these properties of linguistic expressions may be produced?”, and, second, that we can still use the notion of reference in our explanations of some effects of communication (...) if we treat reference as pragmatic rather than semantic phenomenon. The actuality of this research is provided by the fact that the identification of meanings of certain types of terms, proper names first of all, with their references is still very influential account in the philosophy of language. The author uses the methods of historical exposition and philosophical analysis of the main theories of reference, such as theory of descriptions and causal theory of reference. It is shown that these theories in their different modifications fail to explain how references as semantic relations between proper names and their bearers may be produced in the course of communication and social interaction. But although there are alternative concepts of the nature meanings of proper names it is concluded that we still may apply the notion of reference in our explanations of natural language communication if we treat reference as pragmatic effect caused by mutual coordination of actions achieved by the participants of certain communicative situation. (shrink)

Two distinctions within the category of designators -- Further defining the central theses -- Structure and rigidity -- Structure and naming -- Interlude: interim review and a look ahead -- Referential uses of denoting expressions -- Complex referring expressions -- Summary, overview, and general morals.

Description: The book points to a new logic of singular designators based upon a close analysis of work in the area by contemporary philosophers of language. The philosophers range from Frege, Russell, Quine, Strawson and Dummett to Kripke, Hintikka, Plantinga, Kaplan, Donnellan, Searle and Burge. It is generally taken for granted that proper names are rigid designators, having no meaning content, which explains their intranslatability into other languages. However, they do have their modes of presentation that must constitute their sense. (...) There is little room for contradiction here in admitting that proper names have a sense, which does not amount to meaning. One of the advantages of this position is that it blocks the emergence of the Kripkean puzzle about belief by accepting different belief contents corresponding to a variation in the senses of the names involved. Is Kripke's distinction between rigid and non-rigid designators finally valid' the author asks, questioning the corollaries that are supposed to follow from the distinction, viz., that proper names do not have descriptive backing, and that there are contingent a priori truths. He draws our attention to predicative occurrences of proper names, in the modal context, matching corresponding occurrences of definite descriptions. His explanation of contingency, where proper names or definite descriptions are involved, is innovatively straight, simple and broad-based, at par with situations having ordinary predicates. Parts of the book have taken a final shape in response to comments by Strawson, Dummett and Burge. (shrink)

In this paper, we examine a fundamental problem that appears in Greek philosophy: the paradoxes of self-reference of the type of “Third Man” that appears first in Plato’s 'Parmenides', and is further discussed in Aristotle and the Peripatetic commentators and Proclus. We show that the various versions are analysed using different language, reflecting different understandings by Plato and the Platonists, such as Proclus, on the one hand, and the Peripatetics (Aristotle, Alexander, Eudemus), on the other hand. We show (...) that the Peripatetic commentators do not focus on Plato’s solution but primarily on the formulation of the “Third Man” paradox. On the contrary, Proclus seems to be convinced that Plato suggests a sound solution to the paradox by defining the predicate of similarity (homogeneity) that demarcates two types of homogeneous entities – the eide and the participants in them in a way that their confusion would be inadmissible. We claim that Plato’s solution follows a sound line of reasoning that is formalisable in a language of Frege-Russell type; hence there exists a model in which Plato’s reasoning is valid. Furthermore, we notice that Plato’s definition of the second-order predicate of similarity is attained by resorting to first-order entities. In this sense, Plato’s definition is comparable to Eudoxus’ definition of ratio, which is also attained by resorting to first-order objects. Consequently, Plato seems to follow a logical practice established by the mathematicians of the 5th century, notably Eudoxus, in his solution to the paradox. (shrink)

This paper is a contribution to the debate concerning the kind of philosophical conclusions that can (or cannot) be derived from systematic empirical studies of intuitions about the reference of proper names. The focus of the paper is the famous study by Machery et al. (2004) in which intercultural differences in semantic intuitions between American and Chinese participants were observed. Machery et al. used the obtained results to question the usefulness of intuitions in philosophical discussions concerning the reference (...) of proper names. In this paper, I present the results of my own philosophical-experimental studies aimed at analyzing methods used in research dedicated to the problem of reference rather than semantic intuitions as such. These results indicate a significant instability of responses regarding the reference of proper names and their susceptibility to the impact of philosophically insignificant factors. Based on the collected data, I argue that methods used in experimental studies concerning the reference of proper names conducted to date do not guarantee the assessment of intuitions of the desired kind. (shrink)

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

For professional philosophers, philosophy educators, students from beginning to graduate, and librarians.

An exhaustive work on Confucius' pedagogic thinking by Chen Jingpan, who is among modern China's first group of scholars with a doctoral degree in education. He started his research into Confucius' teachings on education as early as the 1930s, and the present book, written in English, is the fruit of his long years of study. Chapters: the importance of a scientific study of Confucius; the place of Confucius in Chinese civilization; honors, titles, and ranks conferred upon Confucius throughout Chinese history; (...) modern attitudes towards Confucius; the objective of this study of the philosophy of Confucius, to show the place of Confucius as a teacher, and his contribution as a teacher. (shrink)

The flight to reference is a widely-used strategy for resolving philosophical issues. The three steps in a flight to reference argument are: (1) offer a substantive account of the reference relation, (2) argue that a particular expression refers (or does not refer), and (3) draw a philosophical conclusion about something other than reference, like truth or ontology. It is our contention that whenever the flight to reference strategy is invoked, there is a crucial step that (...) is left undefended, and that without a defense of this step, the flight to reference is a fatally flawed strategy; it cannot succeed in resolving philosophical issues. In this paper we begin by setting out the flight to reference strategy and explaining what is wrong with arguments that invoke the strategy. We then illustrate the problem by considering arguments for and against eliminative materialism. In the final section we argue that much the same problem undermines Philip Kitcher's attempt to defend scientific realism. (shrink)

4 Moral reality and the end of desire* Mark Platts i The moral realist view I want to examine takes off from a semantic thesis, a thesis about the proper ...

The papers in this collection discuss the central questions about the connections between language, reality and human understanding. The complex relations between accounts of meaning and facts about ordinary speakers’ understanding of their language are examined so as to illuminate the philosophical character of the connections between language and reality. The collection as a whole is a thematically unified treatment of some of the most central questions within contemporary philosophy of language.

Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Sense, Reference, and Philosophy.

ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE: AN INTRODUCTION. The aim of this volume is to extend the horizon of philosophical analysis as it is ...

This is the second edition of an award-winning 1981 book (Princeton University Press and Basil Blackwell, based on the author’s doctoral dissertation) considered to be a classic in the philosophy of language movement known variously as the New Theory of Reference or the Direct-Reference Theory, as well as in the metaphysics of modal essentialism that is related to this philosophy of language.

This article surveys recent literature by Parsons, McGee, Shapiro and others on the significance of categoricity arguments in the philosophy of mathematics. After discussing whether categoricity arguments are sufficient to secure reference to mathematical structures up to isomorphism, we assess what exactly is achieved by recent ‘internal’ renditions of the famous categoricity arguments for arithmetic and set theory.

Reference is a central topic in philosophy of language, and has been the main focus of discussion about how language relates to the world. R. M. Sainsbury sets out a new approach to the concept, which promises to bring to an end some long-standing debates in semantic theory. Lucid and accessible, and written with a minimum of technicality, Sainsbury's book also includes a useful historical survey. It will be of interest to those working in logic, mind, and metaphysics (...) as well as essential reading for philosophers of language. (shrink)

In recent years, experimental philosophers have questioned the reliance of philosophical arguments on intuitions elicited by thought experiments. These challenges seek to undermine the use of this methodology for a particular domain of theorizing, and in some cases to raise doubts about the viability of philosophical work in the domain in question. The topic of semantic reference has been an important area for discussion of these issues, one in which critics of the reliance on intuitions have made particularly strong (...) claims about the prospects for philosophical theories of reference and arguments based on claims about reference. In this article, I review the main lines of argument in this area of experimental philosophy, with particular emphasis on the relevance of empirical data about intuitions to philosophical views. I argue that although traditional philosophical theorizing about reference faces little threat from experimental data about intuitions, there is nevertheless much to be gained from collecting and analyzing such data, which holds the promise of greatly enriching our conception of the mechanisms governing judgments about semantic reference in ways that are highly relevant to philosophers. (shrink)

This volume puts forward a distinct new theory of direct reference, blending insights from both the Fregean and the Russellian traditions, and fitting the general theory of language understanding used by those working on the pragmatics of natural language.

It has sometimes been suggested that the so-called new theory of reference (NTR) would provide an alternative picture of meaning and reference which avoids the unwelcome consequences of the meaning-variance thesis and incommesurability. However, numerous philosophers of science have been quite critical towards the idea and NTR in general. It is argued that many of them have an over-simplified and, in part, mistaken understanding of what NTR amounts to. It is submitted that NTR, when correctly understood, can be (...) an important ingredient in the realist toolkit for defending the rationality of science. (shrink)

These fifteen original essays address the core semantic concepts of reference and referring from both philosophical and linguistic perspectives. After an introductory essay that casts current trends in reference and referring in terms of an ongoing dialogue between Fregean and Russellian approaches, the book addresses specific topics, balancing breadth of coverage with thematic unity. The contributors, all leading or emerging scholars, address trenchant neo-Fregean challenges to the direct reference position; consider what positive claims can be made about (...) the mechanism of reference; address the role of a theory of reference within broader theoretical context; and investigate other kinds of linguistic expressions used in referring activities that may themselves be referring expressions. The topical unity and accessibility of the essays, the stage-setting introductory essay, and the comprehensive index combine to make R _eference and Referring_, along with the other books in the Topics in Contemporary Philosophy series, appropriate for use in advanced undergraduate and graduate courses. (shrink)

La présente étude se propose d'analyser, de mettre en cause, puis en perspective le thème reçu de la fin de la philosophie. Analyser le motif, en développant diverses variantes (post-analytique, phénoménologique, etc.). Le mettre en cause, à la lumière d'une conception de la signification philosophique qui aille au-delà des paradoxes dont la racine est commune : une " cours à la référence " au détriment d'une théorie minimale de l'auto-référence. Au total, fournir un modèle qui mène vers la fin de (...) la fin de la philosophie, c'est-à-dire vers la vie toujours recommencée. (shrink)

Reference is a central topic in philosophy of language, and has been the main focus of discussion about how language relates to the world. R. M. Sainsbury sets out a new approach to the concept, which promises to bring to an end some long-standing debates in semantic theory.There is a single category of referring expressions, all of which deserve essentially the same kind of semantic treatment. Included in this category are both singular and plural referring expressions, complex and (...) non-complex referring expressions, and empty and non-empty referring expressions. Referring expressions are to be described semantically by a reference condition, rather than by being associated with a referent. In arguing for these theses, Sainsbury's book promises to end the fruitless oscillation between Millian and descriptivist views. Millian views insist that every name has a referent, and find it hard to give a good account of names which appear not to have referents, or at least are not known to do so, like ones introduced through error, ones where it is disputed whether they have a bearer and ones used in fiction. Descriptivist theories require that each name be associated with some body of information. These theories fly in the face of the fact names are useful precisely because there is often no overlap of information among speakers and hearers. The alternative position for which the book argues is firmly non-descriptivist, though it also does not require a referent. A much broader view can be taken of which expressions are referring expressions: not just names and pronouns used demonstratively, but also some complex expressions and some anaphoric uses of pronouns.Sainsbury's approach brings reference into line with truth: no one would think that a semantic theory should associate a sentence with a truth value, but it is commonly held that a semantic theory should associate a sentence with a truth condition, a condition which an arbitrary state of the world would have to satisfy in order to make the sentence true. The right analogy is that a semantic theory should associate a referring expression with a reference condition, a condition which an arbitrary object would have to satisfy in order to be the expression's referent.Lucid and accessible, and written with a minimum of technicality, Sainsbury's book also includes a useful historical survey. It will be of interest to those working in logic, mind, and metaphysics as well as essential reading for philosophers of language. (shrink)

Presenting a novel account of singular thought, a systematic application of recent work in the theory of speech acts, and a partial revival of Russell's analysis of singular terms, this book takes an original approach to the perennial problems of reference and singular terms by separating the underlying issues into different levels of analysis.

Against the dominant view in contemporary Hobbes scholarship, I argue that Hobbes’ philosophy of language implicitly denies that linguistic expressions refer to anything. I defend this thesis both textually, in light of what Hobbes actually said, and contextually, in light of Hobbes’ desertion of the vocabulary of suppositio, which was prevalent in semantics leading up to Hobbes. Hobbes explained away the apparent fact of linguistic reference via a reductive analysis: the relation between words and things wholly reduces to (...) a composite of the relation of signification between words and conceptions on the one hand, and the relation of representation between conceptions and things on the other. Intentionality, for Hobbes, accrues to conceptions, not words. (shrink)

The article examines the encounter in philosophy as a topic of philosophy, i.e., as a specificity of human existence and as a milieu of pursuing philosophy. Starting from the properties of encounter, which philosophical texts, primarily Martin Buber’s dialogic, recognize and distinguish as those that belong to it in the real world, the paper analyses the changes of encounters in a virtual environment. Among several different changes, two stand out: (1) the reduced awareness of the real being (...) in itself and (2) the impaired ability to be present for other. (shrink)